.
You might have
seen a computer built in WireWorld rules. You might know that Conway's Game of Life is Turing-complete and you might have
seen a Turing machine in Life.
A very clever and industrious coalition has built a general purpose computer in Life, and programmed it to play Tetris. Amazing. Detailed write up is
here. Some vital statistics:
- Computer fits inside 3 million by 11 million box.
- CPU is a 16 bit RISC, Harvard architecture (separate program and data spaces)
- Tetris program is 300 lines of a new high level language called Cogol
- Assembly derived from output of the compiler is code-golfed down to 300 lines
- CPU is implemented using logic gate tiles implemented in a wireworld style of cellular automaton
- the wireworld level is implemented using the
Life-in-Life metapixel each about 20k x 20k in size
The write-up signs off with
Quote:
We are discussing the next program that we want to write for the QFT computer. Right now, Pong looks like a nice goal.
Looks like they are also, right now, building a better more high level language to replace Cogol. Perhaps worth keeping an eye on their repos:
https://github.com/QuestForTetris